Not as many modern industries as in the agricultural past are as aware of the changing of the seasons. Certainly, the odd business may have a heightened awareness of the time of year every so often, and most businesses are sensitive to the end of the financial year. Seasonality on the whole, however, is not something that is often discussed in the IT sector.

This is particularly true in the world of SEO. Most SEO talk is about implementations that are year-round. Perhaps this is because of the continuous nature of search engine optimisation. For some businesses, however, the change of the seasons can have a very big impact on how and why users search. For others, seasonality affects the productivity of other means of promotion the business may implement, such as pay per click. In each case, the SEO plan of the site may need fine tuning to pick up the slack.

Some businesses will be very directly affected by the change in seasons. Seasons have an obvious impact on retail sites, for example. Not only do the holiday seasons impact on sales, but the natural seasons of the year can dictate the things users are looking to buy and how they choose to buy them. A clothing site that fails to target keywords for winter sales, for example, could miss out on a great deal of business. The SEO techniques for these seasons need to be well in place before the shift in season begins to affect business. This can mean that if your site has e-commerce for retail functions your SEO plan will be an ongoing process.

Unlike the swift alterations that are necessary to address the seasons in real-world business, your SEO plan doesn’t have to change tactics at the drop of a hat. In fact, the nature of search engine optimisation defies this kind of instant reaction to a change in the weather. It’s impossible to strip your site of summer keywords and have it prepared for autumn the next day. Like every SEO technique, seasonally-focussed SEO needs time to kick in. It is for this reason that seasonal planning is essential, and it can help to talk to your SEO consultant about this.

There are shifts in the market that every business needs to take into account in a search engine optimisation campaign. The recent global economic downturn and the tentative recovery that is slowly emerging are two factors that sites need to address no matter what industry they operate in. For some businesses, each shift in the global economics has a big effect on what users are looking for. At a very basic level this could mean the difference between selling services as ‘budget’ or ‘cost-efficient’ as opposed to ‘premium’. As anyone who has dealt with their business’ marketing will know, a small alteration in adjectives can make a major difference to a business’ appeal to the target market.

You can approach our experts at SEO Consult if you have any questions about how seasonality affects your specific site.

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